🔥The Internet is Cooked: May 1, 2026

Good evening. Here's your dispatch from the corners of the internet still fighting slop: labor, war, art, and a Lego video that has done more to shape global opinion than the entire U.S. State Department.

Today is May Day, born in 1886 when American workers walked off the job demanding the eight-hour workday and got Haymarket for their trouble. The U.S. responded by moving Labor Day to September so nobody would get any ideas. Anyway.

500+ labor unions and community groups are out today under the "Workers Over Billionaires" banner. In NYC this morning, protesters marched from Bryant Park toward Jeff Bezos' penthouse, which is the kind of itinerary I respect. Mayor Mamdani's rally speech starts at 38:00.

A propaganda firm in Tehran with what looks like three guys in their 20s has produced the most effective anti-war content of the decade. Explosive Media's Lego-style videos, with missiles labeled "for the stolen Blacks" and "for the victims of Iran Air flight 655," indict two centuries of American foreign policy in 90 seconds. YouTube banned them. Every other platform made them viral. Breaking Points has a great segment on their process.

The thing nobody wants to admit is that the videos work because they're true. Call them propaganda. They are. But propaganda only catches if there's something underneath it to catch on. Abu Ghraib happened. Flight 655 happened. The State Department spent eighty years assuming nobody would notice. A kid with Midjourney noticed.

Two outlets worth your money this week: Breaking Points, still one of the only places "should we be at war" gets asked on camera by someone with an audience (I disagree with Saagar on 93% of things, and just wish he would smoke a fat one, but we agree on the fact that this war is ipso facto studpido); and Drop Site, a nonprofit doing the journalism nobody else will. Pay journalists, not Andreessen Horowitz.

Jacobin on Mark Carney, the technocrat-banker Canadians elected to keep Trump out of the pantry: now 100 days in, slashing 7.5% from spending (rising to 15% by 2029), gutting the public service with "AI somehow," and boosting defense by $9 billion. Voters wanted a wall against the right. They got a banker with a chainsaw.

Better Canadian news: Avi Lewis is now NDP leader, running on a wealth tax, national rent cap, and affordability. Can someone from Zohran's team get up here? We need it yesterday.

Toronto tenants just formed one of the biggest tenant unions in city history. Landlords hate this one weird trick.

Soundtrack: Mr. Cardamom's "Nani". Yes, we're still crushing on Zohran. No, we will not be taking questions.

Solidarity Forever,

The Internet is Cooked